· GULA, VOL I. (UK) · Victor de Almeida
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Lonely Wolf International Film Festival Announces Mid-Year Competition Results with 83 Semi-Finalists from Record-Breaking 559 Global Submissions
Festival Reveals First 10 Jury Selection Titles Ahead of December Virtual Showcase
LONDON, UK – 26 JUNE 2025 – The Lonely Wolf International Film Festival today announced its mid-year competition results, with 83 exceptional projects advancing to semi-finalist status from a record-breaking 559 global submissions. The festival, now in its 6th virtual edition, has revealed the first 10 titles confirmed for its Official Jury Selection, representing the cream of international independent cinema.
"This year's submissions have showcased an extraordinary calibre of emerging talent from across the globe," said Adrian Perez, Founder and Festival Director of Lonely Wolf International Film Festival. "With only 15.2% of entries making it through our rigorous selection process, these semi-finalists represent the future of independent filmmaking."
First 10 Jury Selection Titles Announced...
The festival's preliminary results showcase remarkable diversity across genres and formats, with semi-finalists competing in categories including Best Feature Film, Best Short Film, Best Micro-Short, Best Animation, Best Documentary, and numerous technical merit awards. Notable achievements include multiple nominations for Sweden's Cuculus and USA's Clarity, demonstrating the exceptional quality of this year's field.
Key Festival Dates...
The full virtual festival experience launching in December will feature comprehensive critical reviews by the festival's distinguished panel of critics, exclusive press coverage through editorial partners including Fragile Ego, and the complete revelation of category winners and official nominations.
"What sets Lonely Wolf apart is our commitment to celebrating emerging voices in cinema," Perez added. "These filmmakers have risen above fierce competition, and we're thrilled to provide them with the platform and recognition they deserve."
Semi-finalists have the opportunity to progress to official nominations (Top 5-10 in their categories), win their categories, or maintain their prestigious semi-finalist status. Category winners automatically receive invitations to the festival's exclusive Official Jury Selection Film Showcase.
The Lonely Wolf International Film Festival continues to accept submissions through October 17, 2025, for filmmakers seeking to join this year's selection. The festival is renowned for its brutally competitive selection process and its unique celebration of independent cinema's most innovative voices.
For more information about the Lonely Wolf International Film Festival, semi-finalist listings, and submission guidelines, visit: www.lonelywolffilmfest.com
About Lonely Wolf International Film Festival
Founded by Adrian Perez, the Lonely Wolf International Film Festival has established itself as a premier platform for emerging filmmakers worldwide. Now in its 6th virtual edition, the festival champions bold, innovative storytelling across all genres and formats, from micro-shorts to features, animation to documentary. Known for its distinctive wolf-themed brand and tight-knit "wolfpack" community, Lonely Wolf provides IMDb-accredited nominations and critical reviews through its partnership with the Lonely Wolf Journal.
Important Highlights...
Lonely Wolf International Film Festival Announces Mid-Year Competition Results with 83 Semi-Finalists from Record-Breaking 559 Global Submissions
Festival Reveals First 10 Jury Selection Titles Ahead of December Virtual Showcase
LONDON, UK – 26 JUNE 2025 – The Lonely Wolf International Film Festival today announced its mid-year competition results, with 83 exceptional projects advancing to semi-finalist status from a record-breaking 559 global submissions. The festival, now in its 6th virtual edition, has revealed the first 10 titles confirmed for its Official Jury Selection, representing the cream of international independent cinema.
"This year's submissions have showcased an extraordinary calibre of emerging talent from across the globe," said Adrian Perez, Founder and Festival Director of Lonely Wolf International Film Festival. "With only 15.2% of entries making it through our rigorous selection process, these semi-finalists represent the future of independent filmmaking."
First 10 Jury Selection Titles Announced...
- CUCULUS (Sweden) – Directors: Lucas Carlsson, Jonathan Morell
- GULA, VOL I. (UK) – Director: Victor de Almeida
- TOY GUNS (USA) – Director: Jake Thomas Armbruster
- FAHRENHEIT 2051 (France) – Director: Hadrien Genest
- CLARITY (USA) – Director: Joseph Oliver Hooten
- BLU'S (India) – Director: Rajesh PK
- LIFTED (USA) – Director: Daniel Robichaud
- CHRISTO THE CIVILIZED BARBARIAN (USA) – Director: Shaddy Safadi
- HOT MESS (UK) – Director: Tortor Smith
- THE LAST GUNFIGHT... YET! (France) – Director: Pablo Tréhin-Marçot
The festival's preliminary results showcase remarkable diversity across genres and formats, with semi-finalists competing in categories including Best Feature Film, Best Short Film, Best Micro-Short, Best Animation, Best Documentary, and numerous technical merit awards. Notable achievements include multiple nominations for Sweden's Cuculus and USA's Clarity, demonstrating the exceptional quality of this year's field.
Key Festival Dates...
- Submission Deadline: October 17, 2025
- Virtual Festival: December 18-31, 2025
- Full Results & Winners Announcement: December 18, 2025
The full virtual festival experience launching in December will feature comprehensive critical reviews by the festival's distinguished panel of critics, exclusive press coverage through editorial partners including Fragile Ego, and the complete revelation of category winners and official nominations.
"What sets Lonely Wolf apart is our commitment to celebrating emerging voices in cinema," Perez added. "These filmmakers have risen above fierce competition, and we're thrilled to provide them with the platform and recognition they deserve."
Semi-finalists have the opportunity to progress to official nominations (Top 5-10 in their categories), win their categories, or maintain their prestigious semi-finalist status. Category winners automatically receive invitations to the festival's exclusive Official Jury Selection Film Showcase.
The Lonely Wolf International Film Festival continues to accept submissions through October 17, 2025, for filmmakers seeking to join this year's selection. The festival is renowned for its brutally competitive selection process and its unique celebration of independent cinema's most innovative voices.
For more information about the Lonely Wolf International Film Festival, semi-finalist listings, and submission guidelines, visit: www.lonelywolffilmfest.com
About Lonely Wolf International Film Festival
Founded by Adrian Perez, the Lonely Wolf International Film Festival has established itself as a premier platform for emerging filmmakers worldwide. Now in its 6th virtual edition, the festival champions bold, innovative storytelling across all genres and formats, from micro-shorts to features, animation to documentary. Known for its distinctive wolf-themed brand and tight-knit "wolfpack" community, Lonely Wolf provides IMDb-accredited nominations and critical reviews through its partnership with the Lonely Wolf Journal.
Important Highlights...
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"Among the standout selections is Frankly (USA), a 71-second experimental fashion micro-short by directors Anatoly Trofimov and Konstantin Karpeev that exemplifies the festival's commitment to boundary-pushing cinema. Shot on luminous 16mm film, the work oscillates between high-fashion tableaux and candid rooftop confessionals, where models' unfiltered musings—from frustrations with slow walkers to gleeful accounts of dropping toilet water from seventeen storeys—become acts of micro-rebellion against fashion's gilded cage. Festival critic Adrián Pérez praised the film as 'a crystalline meditation on the liminal space between performative identity and unguarded confession,' awarding it a B+/A- grade and noting how the directors transform fashion film conventions into what he calls 'a generational document' that captures the contradictions of contemporary existence. The film's selection underscores Lonely Wolf's recognition of works that challenge form while delivering profound artistic statements, regardless of runtime."
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· FRANKLY (USA) · Anatoly Trofimov and Konstantin Karpeev (Marty Rush)
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· THE PRESENCE OF SNOWGOOD (UK) · Leigh Tarrant
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"Representing the festival's embrace of regional horror excellence, The Presence of Snowgood (UK) demonstrates how passionate independent filmmaking can transcend budgetary constraints. Directed by Leigh Tarrant and written/produced by Neill McKenzie, this atmospheric 'forestal thriller' transforms the Kent and Sussex borderlands into a haunting psychological landscape where a detective's search for missing persons unearths Saxon mythology and communal trauma. Featuring veteran genre actress Caroline Munro alongside Sarah Maur Ward and Holly Roberts, the film earned praise from festival critic Adrián Pérez for its 'topographical uncanniness' and treatment of landscape as both character and psychological state, drawing comparisons to Ben Wheatley's A Field in England and the British folk horror renaissance. Awarded a B+ grade, Pérez lauded it as 'passion project filmmaking in the truest sense,' noting how McKenzie and Tarrant have crafted 'not just a ghost story, but a meditation on how places remember.' The selection reinforces Lonely Wolf's commitment to championing regional voices that prove compelling storytelling needs only vision and dedication, not Hollywood budgets."
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"Pushing the boundaries of experimental cinema, Turning to Birds - 200 Years of Evil Chill (UK) by directors Andre Semenza and Fernanda Lippi represents the festival's commitment to radical cinematic innovation. Created during pandemic isolation and incorporating AI-authored diary entries as narrative substrate, this ten-minute cli-fi fever dream transforms ecological catastrophe into intimate psychodrama. The film's climactic image—a naked figure ascending an electricity tower toward implied electrocution—earned particular praise from festival critic Adrián Pérez, who awarded it a B+/A- grade and described it as achieving 'something genuinely rare in contemporary cinema—it makes the apocalypse feel intimate without domesticating its horror.' Pérez positioned the work at 'the vanguard of what cinema might become in our posthuman century,' comparing its terrible beauty to László Nemes and Apichatpong Weerasethakul while noting how Semenza and Lippi's collaboration with artificial intelligence as co-author creates 'cinema as séance, summoning futures we'd rather not see but cannot look away from.' This selection exemplifies Lonely Wolf's dedication to showcasing films that challenge not just cinematic form but our understanding of authorship and consciousness itself."
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· TURNING TO BIRDS: 200 YEARS OF EVIL CHILL (UK) · Andre Semenza, Fernanda Lippi
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· WAKING CONUNDRUM (Canada) · Dale Loon, Alyssa-Rose Hunter
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"Showcasing exceptional emerging talent, Waking Conundrum (Canada) by student filmmakers Dale Loon and Alyssa-Rose Hunt proves that visionary cinema requires no Hollywood budget. This one-room thriller—about a man awakening in a space with an ostensibly endless ceiling, only to discover he may be trapped in a post-patriarchal gynocracy—earned a B+ grade from festival critic Adrián Pérez, who praised it as 'a remarkable student achievement that transcends its budgetary constraints.' Drawing comparisons to Vincenzo Natali's Cube and Charlie Kaufman's cerebral works, the film transforms its single location into what Pérez calls 'a labyrinthine thriller of ontological displacement' that interrogates power structures and gender dynamics with sophisticated ambiguity. Christina Konarsky's performance as the enigmatic Venora anchors this 'meditation on the impossibility of objective reality within systems of oppression,' marking Loon and Hunt as directors to watch. The selection reinforces Lonely Wolf's commitment to discovering student filmmakers who dare to excavate uncomfortable truths from speculative premises, proving that the future of independent cinema burns bright in the next generation."
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"Among the festival's screenplay selections, Importers (USA) by writers Kathleen Regan and Simon Barracchini stands as an exemplar of speculative fiction's power to illuminate contemporary anxieties. This unproduced dystopian masterwork, which earned a rare A grade from festival critic Adrián Pérez, follows three generations of men navigating a totalitarian educational system called the Conservatory, where conformity masquerades as enlightenment. Pérez praised it as 'a profoundly prescient meditation' that feels 'urgently calibrated to our contemporary moment of algorithmic surveillance and performative conformity,' drawing comparisons to Yorgos Lanthimos's The Lobster and recent works like Ari Aster's Beau Is Afraid. The screenplay's emotional core—particularly a scene where a grandfather secretly passes a forbidden pin to his grandson—demonstrates how Regan and Barracchini transform bureaucratic horror into deeply human drama. Pérez concluded that this 'work of urgent political imagination deserves immediate production,' positioning Importers as exactly the kind of uncompromising, socially conscious storytelling that Lonely Wolf champions. The selection highlights the festival's commitment to discovering powerful unproduced works ready to make the leap from page to screen."
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